Amazon back in business: Entire product range available again after new FDI e-commerce rules

The stir caused by the revised FDI guidelines in Indian e-commerce seems to have settled down now, at least for Amazon. In a little over three weeks since the government kicked in revised norms on February 1, Amazon has brought back all of its products that it had delisted from its marketplace platform Amazon Seller Services.

Amazon had 180 million products listed on its marketplace portal as on January 17, a day after it sought an extension of the February 1 deadline by four months.

However, the number of listed products gradually declined from January 17 onwards to 154 million on February 1, only to bring back all of its catalogue having 182 million products by February 22, according to the data by US-based e-commerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse.

“Practically all of the products which were removed before February 1 are now back on Amazon. There is always fluctuation in the catalogue because of out of stock days for example, but everything Amazon was previously selling, if still in stock, is back,” Juozas Kaziukėnas, Founder and CEO at Marketplace Pulse told Financial Express Online.

According to the data shared by Kaziukėnas, 400,000 products and 10,000 products of Amazon’s biggest sellers Cloudtail and Appario respectively listed for sale on the website before February 1 were taken off completely.

“While the listed products decreased to zero but then it increased back to 400,000 and 10,000 for Cloudtail and Appario respectively. I believe these are not the only two sellers Amazon controls – there is also Sigma Online, Meera-Enterprises, Rocket Kommerce LLP, and possibly many more,” said Kaziukėnas.

“We were silent on this from day 1 as we knew nothing will change. Its a big scam,” online sellers’ body AIOVA tweeted.

Based on the number of positive reviews received during the last 30 days, Appario (electronics) is the top seller on Amazon with 14, 208 positive reviews followed by Cloudtail (fashion), Darshita Electronics (electronics), Amazon Retail (grocery and gourmet foods), uRead-Store (books), as per the list updated by Marketplace Pulse on February 25.

“However, it’s not clear how some of the sellers are related to Amazon. The Amazon marketplace is anonymous, seller business details are unknown, so it is hard to verify the identities of sellers,” said Kaziukėnas.

For example, Sigma Online which is into fashion category and Meera-Enterprises into electronics, both used to be called Rocket Kommerce LLP before February 1, but changed their name on the date, even though when customers receive packages from them the invoice shows Rocket Kommerce LLP, he added.

Amazon had reportedly lost more than $45 billion while for Walmart it was more than $5 billion loss in market cap on February 1. At the end of February 1 trading, Amazon’s market cap stood at $798.81 billion while for Walmart it was $272.69 billion.